1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of correcting a dead time in an analog/digital converter (hereinafter called an A/D converter for brevity) or a linear amplifier used in a pulse wave-height analyzer, etc., which have been frequently used in fields such as the radioactive instrumentation field.
2. Description of the Prior Art
According to an old method of correcting a dead time, as shown in FIG. 8, a dead time had been corrected by using a time equal to a time T.sub.c, required for treating an output signal B generated by a slow amplifier after a pulse signal A from a first amplifier was input, as a dead time t.sub.D and by stopping a timer used for determining a measuring time during the dead time t.sub.D. However, according to this old method, as shown in the experimental results of FIG. 10, a disadvantage had occurred in that a dead-time correcting error is remarkably increased with an increase in the counting-rate, whereby the method can hardly be put into practice.
In view of the above, recently a method of correcting a dead time has been proposed in which a correcting operation of keeping a timer used for determining a measuring time stopped until a further subsequent pulse is input in the event that a "leading pile-up" phenomenon occurs, in which a subsequent pulse is input to the slow amplifier before an output signal which is generated by the slow amplifier in response to a previous input pulse has reached its peak, as shown in FIG. 9, in addition to the above described old method. However, also according to such conventional methods, the improvement of a dead-time correcting error has been still insufficient, as is shown in the experimental results of said FIG. 10.